


Poker Face

by mediocer



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Werewolf Mates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 05:40:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11525697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mediocer/pseuds/mediocer
Summary: If you give someone the power to bring you great happiness, that person can bring you just as much pain.Jacqueline Torres left for college at eleven, too young and too bright and too alone. She learnt the cold facts of calculus, the intricacies of biology, but the biggest lesson she had taken away from the cold, snide man who had donated half her genetic material was this message. Now, she's twenty-three, and breaking ground in the study of werewolves.But, one night, she gets drinks one, two, five glasses of wine, and she slops together an article about the cons of having a mate, an article that promptly goes viral and earns her hundreds of letters labelling her a loveless, bitter shell of a cynic, and other similar insults.Alpha Damon of Mars, unmated, reads the article.He's intrigued—a human woman shooting herself in the foot by going against the grain, by pointing out the pitfalls of having a mate, in a society dominated by werewolves.So he goes to visit her.





	Poker Face

****** THE GAMBLE OF A MATE by Dr. Jacqueline Torres **

All werewolves have mates.

As far as humans know, this is how it goes: werewolves are matched up into mated pairs, and the fated couple are supposed to complete one another, like a jigsaw puzzle, rough edges fitting together seamlessly, two halves of the same soul.

So, with this in mind, who can blame humans, for wanting a mate?

A mate means none of the bitter cycle of tears and rebounds that come with dating, none of the disappointment and heartbreak that come with divorce, none of the uncertainty and cold feet that come with marriage.

A mate means none of the pain that comes with figuring out precisely _who_ your matching jigsaw piece is.

Yes, humans adore the sheer _convenience_ of mates, that fate would decree their significant others for them, instead of forcing them to pick for themselves.

And our infatuation with the idea is painted across our entertainment industry. 

In the last ten years, since the emergence of werewolves from the wallpaper of society, transforming from creatures of fiction to hard fact, there has been a tremendous spike in consumer interest for werewolves, especially with regard to mates.

Nowadays, werewolves dominate the mass media— the printed word, the cinema screen—with your typical ripped, rugged alpha male emblazoned on movie posters and book covers alike, right next to his delicate, innocent flower of a mate,stereotypical variations including the omega and the alpha, the human and the alpha, the rogue and the alpha.

And this has spawned a multimillion-dollar industry forecasted to only expand in the next five years.

But, looking beyond the cheap hearts and tinsel fluff surrounding the concept of mates, few realize that it is a mechanism grounded thoroughly not in romance but in _science_.

(Yes, it is shocking, I know.)

All species are equipped with a variety of features that boost their chances of survival. 

Zebras have their black-and-white stripes, to camouflage from their colourblind predators, lions. Cacti have needle leaves to minimize water loss in the parched desert. Dolphins have echolocation to to compensate for their poor vision underwater.

Werewolves have mates, to support population growth.

A mated pair is more likely to have offspring than an unmated duo. By partnering up werewolves into their ideal pairs, childbirth rates across the population rise, and so, more offspring are born. Hence, the threat of extinction is lessened, and, inversely, their chances of survival increase.

Yes, a mate may come with romance—cuddling and hand-holding and chaste kisses—but those are the _side-effects,_ the byproducts.

Ultimately, however, mates are nothing but another weapon in the arsenal werewolves have to combat that inescapable threat of extinction, right next to the dagger of razor-sharp claws and the shield of acute senses. 

In the end, the true purpose of a mate is for _survival._

But, because of the romanticized portrayal of mates in the media, this is constantly glossed over, as is another fact—that mates have the power to take away happiness, as well as provide it.

In the books, the movies, the television shows, the lucky couple always brings sunshine and rainbows and glitter to each others’ lives, and this concept has been ingrained in our beliefs with different versions of the same magical, happy ending.

But what about the flip side, the cons, the negatives, of having a mate?

If someone can give something to you, then, he or she has the power to take it away from you.

If a mate can offer you such over-the-moon happiness, then, a mate can inflict excruciating emotional agony upon you as well.

Imagine infidelity, rejection, falling apart.

It would hurt a thousand times worse, knowing that this individual, chosen by fate _itself_ to be the mainstay of your happiness, had failed, and that your happiness wasn’t enough, that _you_ weren’t enough.

And so, the truth, at the end of the day, is that a mate doesn’t guarantee you happiness.

No, it remains nothing more than a gamble.

* * *

Dr. Jacqueline Torres is a lycanthropologist at Lupine Research Laboratories. She graduated from UCLA (University of California: Los Angeles) with a Ph.D. in Lycanthropology. In 2015, Dr. Torres received a Franklin Institute Award in recognition of her discovery in using werewolf saliva to heal scar tissue.


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